Evernote for Windows 6.8 Beta 2 Released

Idea

I'm excited to announce Windows 6.8 Beta 2. You can install it here or by checking for updates.

This update improves the rendering of our note, and in particular the behaviors around printing, and PDF preview. It also makes the note pan-able if you have a touch screen. Since this required quite a bit of under-the-hood work, not everything is working quite right yet - you'll notice find and replace isn't hooked up, and some edge cases around drag & drop of files in and out of a note may not work. We've also made changes to paste & match style so this should now behave like it did previously. There's so much here, we did want to release what's already improved to get your feedback.

Let us know what you think and if you have any questions on the changes!

Thanks,

Chantal and the rest of the Windows team.

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Release Notes for Windows version 6.8

Note: Versions 6.8 is supported in OS versions Windows 7 and up.

Improved

We've made a number of changes to how a note is displayed. Some of the key changes include:

Better Print results for notes including highlighting, italics and underline and the ability to print to PDF

If you have a touch monitor, you can now pan notes with the swipe of a finger

More quickly start a bulleted list using a hyphen. In addition to using the still supported '*'+space shortcut, you can now also use '-'+space shortcut

Fixed

This release has many bug fixes. Some notable fixes include

A fix where tables clipped from Microsoft Word or Outlook did not appear correctly in Evernote

A fix where additional lines are pasted when pasting a line of text from Evernote to other applications

A fix for no longer dropping the check box and end line on copy/paste of a to-do item

A fix where some reminders are not synced after clicking the sync button

A fix to ensure the app if downloaded from the Windows Store respects the Options>Start on Windows Logon option

A fix so that selecting the 'New Note' button when in the Business tab with no notebook selected, no longer creates a note in Personal

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I experience a hard crash whenever I select a word in a note using a touchscreen, either by double clicking the word or longpressing on the word with a finger.

Except that, I am so far happy that the bug where spaces were left out between words seems to have been fixed in this release. Implementing a scroll functionality for PDFs, and touch scrolling in notes is also a very nice addition.

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I did now however experience that the mouser cursor became invisible and had to restart. I have experienced a similar problem in Google Chrome before and fixed it in Chrome by disabling hardware acceleration in Chrome.

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I did now however experience that the mouser cursor became invisible and had to restart. I have experienced a similar problem in Google Chrome before and fixed it in Chrome by disabling hardware acceleration in Chrome.

Thanks for reporting this. We do use hardware acceleration (in case it's not obvious, we use an embedded instance of Chrome in our note editor). We can investigate potentially supporting a registry option to disable acceleration.

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Probably not related to this version in particular, but I have several (don't know the exact number) notes that just say Downloading note content. They were all clipped from web sites, and were fine at the time they were clipped. The log file indicates that they are trying to download from the server, but the notes never get populated. #2238766 refers.

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A lot of notes that I clip from web sites have "x percent" values in them. I do a search and replace of the " percent" within the note (CTRL-H). The number of matches is correctly highlighted, and when I click replace or replace all the numbers change as expected in the dialog box, but the text does not actually change. This was working correctly in the previous versions. The only thing I haven't done is uninstall and reinstall this version, but I shouldn't have to do that for such a basic operation.

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A lot of notes that I clip from web sites have "x percent" values in them. I do a search and replace of the " percent" within the note (CTRL-H). The number of matches is correctly highlighted, and when I click replace or replace all the numbers change as expected in the dialog box, but the text does not actually change. This was working correctly in the previous versions. The only thing I haven't done is uninstall and reinstall this version, but I shouldn't have to do that for such a basic operation.

Yes, see the release notes above about "find and replace" for this beta. We're working on implementing it, but it didn't make it in time for this one.

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I also want to thank you for fixing the issue with the disappearing code block. However, I have a problem using the numbered list inside a code block to represent line numbers in the code. After applying a code block to the particular code, I try to press "Numbered List" button in the note formatting toolbar but nothing happens. The only way to make it work is to select another note, go back to the previous note and then I am able to insert a numbered list inside a code block.

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Setting formats for a row (like a header) do not propagate when you add new columns. Background colors do, but not font choices

If your cursor is in column #2, and you right-click somewhere in column #3 and select "delete column" column 2 is deleted. You have to specifically click the column selector or left click in the column first.

If you are in row n, and you right-click and "delete row" nothing happens. You have to specifically select the row selector so it turns green.

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Drop and drag a PDF file into a note. This is what I get. No icon/picture of the file that should be below the text. Only a big text cursor.

The icon appears when I switch to another note and come back to the note. Refresh problem ?

In Tools --> Options --> Note --> Note View subsection make sure "Always show PDF is attachment" is not checked. It is the second option down.That is what causes a problem in this case. If you want to view PDF as an attachment, just right click on it and chose "View as Attachment" on the bottom of the menu after you drop a file into the note.

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In Tools --> Options --> Note --> Note View subsection make sure "Always show PDF is attachment" is not checked. It is the second option down.That is what causes a problem in this case. If you want to view PDF as an attachment, just right click on it and chose "View as Attachment" on the bottom of the menu after you drop a file into the note.

Thanks but... it's not that the attachment is not there. It is, but it shows a white area instead of the attachment. Switching between notes solves the problem.

Anyway I never noticed the option "View as Attachment" Good thing to know, thanks.

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Thanks but... it's not that the attachment is not there. It is, but it shows a white area instead of the attachment. Switching between notes solves the problem.

Anyway I never noticed the option "View as Attachment" Good thing to know, thanks.

You are welcome. All I am saying is that if you uncheck "Always show PDF is attachment", all you have to do is right-click on the PDF and select "View as Attachment" from the bottom of the right-click menu after dropping the file into the note. This option ("View as Attachment") only becomes available if you uncheck "Always show PDF is attachment" in Evernote options. It is still two-step process but you will remain in a note you are currently editing, no need to switch between notes. Just my opinion.

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Formatting table headers seems to be a real pain. Easy to select the first row and apply background colors, but it seems you must have text in each and every field on the first row to format the text, or it won't take.

I suspect that would apply to any row, not just the first row, which is really worse if you want x rows formatted a certian way, you have to fill every single cell before selecting the font color, size, and attribute (BIU)

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Probably not related to this version in particular, but I have several (don't know the exact number) notes that just say Downloading note content. They were all clipped from web sites, and were fine at the time they were clipped. The log file indicates that they are trying to download from the server, but the notes never get populated. #2238766 refers.

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Formatting table headers seems to be a real pain. Easy to select the first row and apply background colors, but it seems you must have text in each and every field on the first row to format the text, or it won't take.

I suspect that would apply to any row, not just the first row, which is really worse if you want x rows formatted a certian way, you have to fill every single cell before selecting the font color, size, and attribute (BIU)

Sorry at the moment this is the current behavior - not sure when it will change (yet)

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Sorry at the moment this is the current behavior - not sure when it will change (yet)

Thanks. This is a key example, but not by any means the only example, of why many of us do not want any new features until existing stuff gets fixed. It is honestly not much harder to create and maintain a table in raw HTML than it is in Evernote.

Well, except HTML tables honor formatting across the entire record if desired.

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If you select a table, and use the Ctrl+M indent shortcut, then the text in the table's cells are all indented, but not the table itself. To indent a table, you need to create a line that's already indented to the level that you want, and cut/paste your table to that line. I realize that there's ambiguity with this and similar operations (align left/middle/right) etc. and the workaround is awkward, but seems to work.

Weird indenting behavior:

Type some text (e.g. "My Table") on a new, unindented, line

Press Enter to go to a new line

Insert a new 2x2 table on the new line

Add numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 to the new cells in order of left-to-right, and top-to-bottom

Select both the new table and the "My Table" line above it

Press Ctrl+M to indent them

You now see that there are now two text lines above the table, both indented, the first containing "My Table", and the second containing the number "1" (presumably extracted from the top-left cell of the table). In addition, the number "2" in the top-right cell has shifted left to the top-left cell. All cell contents are indented, and the table is otherwise unchanged (other cells retain their values, and the table itself is not indented).

Cheers!

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Change current font to some other typeface (note that you cannot change it to Monaco, which does not appear in the font selection dropdown list; see below). I used Consolas but Lucida Console and Arial showed the same effect.

Type a number of space characters, say 10

From inside that block of space characters, select any 2 and copy to the clipboard

Paste them anywhere in the note: you will see "&nbsp;" appear in your pasted content (and it's really there, literally, on the clipboard). Expected simple space characters.

Separate issue: for code blocks, the default font name is shown to be Monaco, even if that font does not exist in the Windows installation, and does not appear in the list of font names. I don't understand why Monaco is used on Windows systems. I realize that this comes from the markup (or rather it's reflected in the markup), and is probably an artifact of the common editor, but it's pretty confusing. Beyond that, the font used for code blocks should be user-configurable.

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V 6.7.5 has introduced issues for a client of mine: when they try to Copy and Paste, the Copy part only works once in a while. Causing them a lot of frustration.

Not sure if I should try this beta or if I should try to find a previous version. Anyone have a suggestion?

Gee, don’t they test these releases before pushing them on unsuspecting users?

I'd drop back to the last version that worked for them. And then, I would monitor the 6.8 GA release thread, whenever that happens, to be sure all is fixed before upgrading your client. My view of the world anyway.

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Bug: Merging notes still doesn't work correctly if Sync on Demand enabled.

Enable Sync on Demand

Go to web site (this will emulate doing it on another machine, or merging notes that are so old that they have been purged from your local database)

Create a text note

Create a note with 1-2MB of attachments

Create a 2nd text note.

Go to your PC and sync.

Click note 1 (step 3 above) and shift-click note 3 (step 5 above). Notes 1 and 3 will quickly download as they are just text. Note 2 will not download as you aren't viewing it.

Right-click and merge the notes.

Notes 1 and 3 are merged fine, probably. Note 2 though only brought in the subject line. The attachment is now in the trash can.

Can the merge routine be updated to make sure all merged notes are downloaded before doing the merge operation? If you aren't paying attention, this will cause data loss as your attachments will be in the trash, and if you empty the trash, not even note history will help.

I can see this happening to me at tax time as I often merge tax documents into one big note per year, which could be 25-30 notes. I shouldn't have to manually ensure they are downloaded.

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I'd drop back to the last version that worked for them. And then, I would monitor the 6.8 GA release thread, whenever that happens, to be sure all is fixed before upgrading your client. My view of the world anyway.

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Maybe I'm missing it, but I can't find the open PDF in another app icon anywhere in the new PDF display. You can RightMouse - Open With to accomplish the task, but that is more clicks than before, inane repetitive clicks.

Not clear to me why this option would be removed or anyone would want to add clicks to accomplish the same task. Now every time you edit or view outside of the EN window (common for me if I am working multiple documents at the same time) or highlight or whatever a PDF there are more clicks to get the job done. Don't get me wrong the scrolling of the PDF is a nice add but does something have to leave? Looking to be more productive, not less. But maybe I am the only one who needs to open PDFs outside EN.

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If you select a table, and use the Ctrl+M indent shortcut, then the text in the table's cells are all indented, but not the table itself. To indent a table, you need to create a line that's already indented to the level that you want, and cut/paste your table to that line. I realize that there's ambiguity with this and similar operations (align left/middle/right) etc. and the workaround is awkward, but seems to work.

Weird indenting behavior:

Type some text (e.g. "My Table") on a new, unindented, line

Press Enter to go to a new line

Insert a new 2x2 table on the new line

Add numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 to the new cells in order of left-to-right, and top-to-bottom

Select both the new table and the "My Table" line above it

Press Ctrl+M to indent them

You now see that there are now two text lines above the table, both indented, the first containing "My Table", and the second containing the number "1" (presumably extracted from the top-left cell of the table). In addition, the number "2" in the top-right cell has shifted left to the top-left cell. All cell contents are indented, and the table is otherwise unchanged (other cells retain their values, and the table itself is not indented).

Cheers!

I created a new feature request for indenting tables and a new bug for the 2nd issue - bad table behavior

1

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Change current font to some other typeface (note that you cannot change it to Monaco, which does not appear in the font selection dropdown list; see below). I used Consolas but Lucida Console and Arial showed the same effect.

Type a number of space characters, say 10

From inside that block of space characters, select any 2 and copy to the clipboard

Paste them anywhere in the note: you will see "&nbsp;" appear in your pasted content (and it's really there, literally, on the clipboard). Expected simple space characters.

Separate issue: for code blocks, the default font name is shown to be Monaco, even if that font does not exist in the Windows installation, and does not appear in the list of font names. I don't understand why Monaco is used on Windows systems. I realize that this comes from the markup (or rather it's reflected in the markup), and is probably an artifact of the common editor, but it's pretty confusing. Beyond that, the font used for code blocks should be user-configurable.

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Maybe I'm missing it, but I can't find the open PDF in another app icon anywhere in the new PDF display. You can RightMouse - Open With to accomplish the task, but that is more clicks than before, inane repetitive clicks.

Not clear to me why this option would be removed or anyone would want to add clicks to accomplish the same task. Now every time you edit or view outside of the EN window (common for me if I am working multiple documents at the same time) or highlight or whatever a PDF there are more clicks to get the job done. Don't get me wrong the scrolling of the PDF is a nice add but does something have to leave? Looking to be more productive, not less. But maybe I am the only one who needs to open PDFs outside EN.

If you right click in a PDF - you get the content menu, there is an open option there.

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I like the new PDF viewer in Evernote for Windows. Can finally scroll PDF files easily without it displaying all pages like the Mac version does.

And FWIW, in limited testing, I no longer get the stuttering I was getting when I am adding text to the top of a note where a PDF file in View (not attachment) mode is below, so maybe the new control works better for that.

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If you right click in a PDF - you get the content menu, there is an open option there.

Yeah, got that, stated it in the post.

I also realize the new PDF viewer looks like Chrome, so maybe some boilerplate in use? Still doesn’t make it less aggravating and more work for someone who frequently opens PDFs in another app. Just saying, feature in feature out.

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Bug: Merging notes still doesn't work correctly if Sync on Demand enabled.

Enable Sync on Demand

Go to web site (this will emulate doing it on another machine, or merging notes that are so old that they have been purged from your local database)

Create a text note

Create a note with 1-2MB of attachments

Create a 2nd text note.

Go to your PC and sync.

Click note 1 (step 3 above) and shift-click note 3 (step 5 above). Notes 1 and 3 will quickly download as they are just text. Note 2 will not download as you aren't viewing it.

Right-click and merge the notes.

Notes 1 and 3 are merged fine, probably. Note 2 though only brought in the subject line. The attachment is now in the trash can.

Can the merge routine be updated to make sure all merged notes are downloaded before doing the merge operation? If you aren't paying attention, this will cause data loss as your attachments will be in the trash, and if you empty the trash, not even note history will help.

I can see this happening to me at tax time as I often merge tax documents into one big note per year, which could be 25-30 notes. I shouldn't have to manually ensure they are downloaded.

Thanks for the report. This is in our backlog.

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I also realize the new PDF viewer looks like Chrome, so maybe some boilerplate in use? Still doesn’t make it less aggravating and more work for someone who frequently opens PDFs in another app. Just saying, feature in feature out.

But now it is consistent. Double-clicking on an image doesn't open it in an image viewer either. I wish it did, but I've resigned myself to do anything with external apps in Evernote, I just right-click, because double-clicking produces inconsistent behavior.

Double-clicking:

.doc/docx - Word opens

.png/jpg - Evernote viewer that obsures the full Evernote app

.pdf not viewed as attachment - nothing happens

.pdf viewed as attachment - external preferred PDF viewer/editor

Totally random from end user point of view.

Right-clicking saves me frustration.

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Get all that, I'd just like to have the open in external app icon that existed in the previous PDF viewer added to the google template. And, I'm with you, I have been trained to think double clicking is going to open something in a default app. Things changing and that requiring me more steps to do the same thing, that frustrates me. It's a personal thing.

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What's worrying me is that this beta seems to start a server on localhost:8080 (didn't check the other interfaces):

I reinstalled the old version again, but still - what's this?

Cheers

André

I reported to Evernote Support some days ago but nobody has answered yet. I think it's bit annoying <...> to receive a new feature which runs a local web server without even putting a checkbox in Settings/Options...

Cheers

Marco

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I reported to Evernote Support some days ago but nobody has answered yet. I think it's bit annoying <...> to receive a new feature which runs a local web server without even putting a checkbox in Settings/Options...

Odd. I have a number of problems with this series of betas, but crashing ain't one of them. I am honestly trying to recall the last time EN crashed outright on me on my PC. Months at least. Not sure if even this calendar year.

When is it crashing on you? I am wondering if you have corrupt notes, or a problem with your file system that is causing issues with the database.

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When is it crashing on you? I am wondering if you have corrupt notes, or a problem with your file system that is causing issues with the database.

I have a saved search (one of many); initially I used it and was performing actions on the resulting notes and it crashed. I reopened and just selecting that search crashes it. Then I went into a notebook and worked with notes, and it just crashed. I think I was deleting a note.

This began immediately after installing beta 2. I don't think it is my system.

Thanks for the report. When the app crashes, are you seeing the "Fatal Error" window with an option to submit the crash logs? These logs are separate than the app activity logs accessible from the menu within the app.

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Thanks for the report. When the app crashes, are you seeing the "Fatal Error" window with an option to submit the crash logs? These logs are separate than the app activity logs accessible from the menu within the app.

Unfortunately, it is crashing without any message at all. It just disappears.

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I reported to Evernote Support some days ago but nobody has answered yet. I think it's bit annoying <...> to receive a new feature which runs a local web server without even putting a checkbox in Settings/Options...

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Update--I just found a note for which taking any action crashes the Windows app. I sent the note from the web app to my email then forwarded that plus the app log to support. Hopefully they can figure it out. It isn't just this note, but at least I can repro the crash with this note.

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There is an issue that actually I have had for a long time in the Windows app, and it is still present, so I thought I would report.

I have a number of feeds, newsletters, etc. that I use my EN email to have the material sent to EN into my default notebook. I then process these emails, which typically have web links to articles and other html content. In some cases, if I just select the note, something occurs that causes EN to see that note as updated, so it jumps to the top of the list when sorting by updated date/time. This is annoying but I can deal with it. It would be great if it could be fixed. Anyone else see something similar? (I have one more recurring issue, I'll report separately).

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OK, here is another recurring issue that I have not previously reported and is still in this version.

I have a number of feeds, newsletters, etc. that I use my EN email to have the material sent to EN into my default notebook. I then process these emails, which typically have web links to articles and other html content.

If I use a search to select notes with particular keywords in the content, sometimes EN scrolls the selected note down to an occurrence of the search term. If I do not click in the note body, but use the scroll bar to get back to the top, it may pop back to the below content. Likewise, if I have scrolled farther down, it pops back up. There are two workarounds--one is if I continue to keep the scroll bar selected (i.e. keep the mouse button pressed) I can hold the note in a given position. But if I let up on the button, the note may jump. The other workaround, which I'm not sure works 100% of the time, is to click in the note which un-highlights the key words, the note stops jumping. Of course, then I can't see where the search term appeared (unless I do an in-note search, but that isn't what I want).

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The link to local files seems to be broken in this beta. I store some spreadsheets in Dropbox and put a link to the local file in EN. This doesn't work anymore. The little hand appears but clicking does not work. Example of the link as it exists below.

file:///C:/Users/<username>/Dropbox/Models/<filename>

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The link to local files seems to be broken in this beta. I store some spreadsheets in Dropbox and put a link to the local file in EN. This doesn't work anymore. The little hand appears but clicking does not work. Example of the link as it exists below.

file:///C:/Users/<username>/Dropbox/Models/<filename>

Thanks for the info, I filled a new bug on this

1

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I take a laptop between locations. Both locations are double monitor but one set is slightly larger than the other, inch or so. I have some tables where I set the column widths on the wider monitor. When I view the note on the smaller monitor the column widths are adjusted as opposed to staying the same and horizontal scrolling kicking in. This is a bit of a PITA since columns wrap on the smaller monitor and what used to fit vertically on one screen doesn't.

Am I missing something or Is there a way to fix column widths in tables, at least across the Windows version. And keep some proportionality on the portable versions?

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I take a laptop between locations. Both locations are double monitor but one set is slightly larger than the other, inch or so. I have some tables where I set the column widths on the wider monitor. When I view the note on the smaller monitor the column widths are adjusted as opposed to staying the same and horizontal scrolling kicking in. This is a bit of a PITA since columns wrap on the smaller monitor and what used to fit vertically on one screen doesn't.

Am I missing something or Is there a way to fix column widths in tables, at least across the Windows version. And keep some proportionality on the portable versions?

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Update--I just found a note for which taking any action crashes the Windows app. I sent the note from the web app to my email then forwarded that plus the app log to support. Hopefully they can figure it out. It isn't just this note, but at least I can repro the crash with this note.

I have found another note that repeatedly crashes this version. Also, there are crashes doing other things, like clicking on a notebook. Today I uninstalled and reinstalled the beta 1. Tested same notes, no crash. Waiting for support feedback before moving back to beta 2.